


teacher, teacher

by JillianEmily



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, F/F, Fluff, Humor, Romance, Teacher AU, Tumblr Prompts, compilation of oneshots in this universe, percabeth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:54:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26368273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JillianEmily/pseuds/JillianEmily
Summary: The one where Percy and Annabeth are two teachers in love.
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson
Comments: 7
Kudos: 197





	1. zoom calls

“ _Babe!_ Do you know where my charger is?”

Annabeth rolls her eyes, adjusting her computer screen so that it was facing her. Percy bangs around in the kitchen some more, for what she suspects is his charger, before he starts cursing, and she suspects he stubbed his toe on the corner of the counter like he’s done five times in the last week.

“Are you okay?” she asks after another minute of loud cursing, poking her head out from his bedroom.

“I’m just getting it all out before the students see.”

Annabeth leans against the doorframe, crossing her arms. “I didn’t know they made you that mad.”  
  
Percy snorts, coming up in front of her to wrap him in her arms. He kisses her forehead before responding. “They make me livid.”

“Couldn’t possibly be as terrible as my kids,” she argues, smiling when his lips catch hers. “My calc kids can’t even do simple algebra.”

“ _I_ can’t do simple algebra,” he says, biting her lower lip. “That’s why I teach marine.”

“Marine is the most boring thing you could’ve possibly chosen to teach, but okay.”

“Says the walking calculator.”

Annabeth pinches his butt and he yelps.

“That was a compliment!”

“Make it sound like it next time,” she says, retreating back to his room. “I know that _you_ finished teaching for the day, but I haven’t, so stay quiet.”

“That’s no fun.”

“You want to know what’s no fun? Having your students find out that you’re hooking up with their math teacher.”

Percy grins. “Is that what this is? And here I thought we were actually dating.”

“We won’t be if they find out because I will kill you,” Annabeth threatens without malice. She takes a step back to retreat into his room and he takes a step to follow her, which sends alarm shooting through her mind. “What are you doing?”

Percy has an amused smile plastered to his face, and she knows she’s about to be fighting whatever he decides to say next.

“I’m coming with you.”

“Uh, no you’re not.”

“It’s my bedroom.”

“You shouldn’t have invited me then,” Annabeth says, eyeing him as he keeps following her. “What are you, my shadow?”

“I can be whatever you want me to be, baby.”

It’s so disgustingly cheesy but it’s also so disgustingly _him_ that she can’t help but give in as he settles down onto the bed. Percy flips onto his stomach, reaching for the pillow she’d been using the previous night as Annabeth sits at his desk. As he turns his head towards her, his eyes trace over her, and she has to pretend not to notice, as though the red flush of her face didn’t give her away.

Percy’s hand reaches out to squeeze her knee to get her attention, and she feels butterflies in her stomach. They had been together for more than a few months now, and they’d been best friends for quite a while longer, but the way he looks at her never ceased to make her feel this way.

“I’m turning the class on,” she mutters, the corners of her lips twitching up. Percy making a motion to zip his lips, making her snicker.

It’s only a minute before someone’s joining the class and Annabeth’s snickering for an entirely different reason.

“ _Piper_ ,” Annabeth says, laughing. “What are you wearing?”

“I like to think that I am wearing Gucci,” Piper says, posing over the camera. “What do you think?”

Annabeth has to stifle her laughs at her favorite student. “I think it looks… very _original_.”

“Why do I feel like that means you think it’s trashy, Ms. Chase? Do you think it’s trashy?”

Annabeth shoves Percy’s head out of frame as he tries to sneak a peek at Piper’s outfit. “To be fair, you _are_ wearing a trash bag.”

“I am insulted that you do not know the difference between a trash bag and a plastic tarp,” Piper says.

Percy grunts as Annabeth shoves him backwards onto the bed again in an attempt to keep him out of camera because she is almost one-thousand percent certain that Piper would recognize him, and considering they were in the middle of a pandemic, Piper would also know that they had been staying together for a while. Annabeth loves Piper, but Piper has zero filter and absolutely _will_ make a comment if she knew.

Eventually, a few more students join, and Annabeth spends time talking to them, trying not to burst out laughing at Percy’s mouthed remarks making fun of her students.

( _“Your students are dumb as hell, Annabeth.”_

 _“You are so lucky that we are on mute.”_

_“How do they even mess up ten plus seven?”_

_“I literally don’t even know.”_ )

Annabeth just tries to get through the hour without walking to the kitchen, grabbing a knife, and murdering herself with it. She really loves her calculus students, but someone once said that the smartest people lack the most common sense, and _boy,_ that could not have been more true.

She thinks she’s in the clear. She makes it through the entire lesson without blowing her cover of staying with their teacher, and it’s actually much more exhilarating than she would’ve expected. It was like she was hiding some dirty secret from them as she avoided eye contact behind the camera and tried not to awkwardly jerk around when his hand found its way back onto her knee, delicately tracing shapes.

Annabeth is _so close,_ and just as she’s getting ready to say goodbye, Piper just _has_ to open her big mouth.

“Ms. Chase?”

“Yes, Piper?”

“Can I ask you something personal?”

Annabeth blinks, a sense of dread settling in her stomach. She suddenly feels as though something is about to go very, _very_ wrong. “Depending on what it is, I may or may not answer.”

Over the screen, Piper keeps a straight face, but Annabeth has taught her for over three years, and she recognizes the fire in her eyes.

“Earlier today, I had a class with Mr. Jackson. Did you know I’m in marine science?”

“I did not,” Annabeth says, strained.

“I’m in marine science, and, uh, we had class earlier today over zoom. I was talking to Mr. Jackson for a little bit after.”

“Were you? That’s nice.”

“Yeah, Mr. Jackson is a super nice teacher. I think you’d like him.”

“Do you now?”

“ _Mh-hm_. Anyways, we were talking, and I told him that I liked the painting that was hanging behind him.”

Annabeth freezes.

“It’s the same painting that’s hanging behind you.”

_Oh god._

“Do you have something to tell us?” Piper asks.

Annabeth’s ears begin to ring as she realizes that she is inevitably screwed. Of course Piper would have no shame in outing her to the entire class of seniors because that was just how Piper was, but Annabeth should’ve been smart enough not to film in the same spot because she _knows_ her students well enough to know that there is a torment of sex jokes about to come her way.

“You’re looking a little bit red there, Ms. Chase.”

“What exactly are you implying, McLean?”

“Why are you in Mr. Jackson’s apartment?”

Annabeth is so mortified that she cannot move, but Percy seems to be just as shameless as Piper because a second later, he’s hopping into frame, smiling widely at her students.

“Hey, Piper!” Percy chirps.

“Mr. Jackson! So nice to see you! Why is Ms. Chase in your apartment?”

Percy clicks his tongue. “Now, that is a good question, but the most simple answer is that we’re quarantining — is that a word? — together.”

Annabeth sees Leo unmute himself and she immediately drops her face into her hands.

“Well, well, well,” Leo _tsks._ “I didn’t know we were studying _chemistry_ right now.”

“I will make you do integrals,” Annabeth threatens.

“I’d like to see you try,” Leo has the audacity to say.

Another student unmutes themself and Annabeth recognizes the voice as Reyna’s.

“I am disgusted to find out that my teachers are dating,” Reyna says.

Percy lights up. “Reyna! You haven’t been showing up to my classes!”

“Mr. Jackson! That is because I simply do not care! Also, I would’ve preferred to not know that you two are living together.”

“Me too,” Annabeth mutters.

“Are you dating?” Piper asks. “I’ve always wanted you to date.”

Annabeth’s eye twitches. “I— _no,_ Piper.”

“We’re not?” Percy frowns. “I thought we were.”

“They don’t need to _know_ that,” she hisses.

Percy, always a people pleaser, pointedly kisses her on the cheek. He was always able to brush things off with a laugh, and it’s something that made Annabeth fall in love with him, but right now, it was something she thinks he would be better off without.

“They don’t care,” he dismisses, turning towards the camera. “Yes, we’re dating! We’ve been dating for six months now.”

“I hate you.”

“That’s so cute!” Piper exclaims.

“I want to throw up,” Reyna says.

Leo gives an impish grin. “I felt my relationship senses tingling.”

“ _Shut up_ , Leo, no one cares,” Piper says, rolling her eyes. “Ms. Chase! I’m so happy for you! You guys should get married.”

“Way to jump the gun, Piper,” Percy says. “Give us another six months at _least._ ”

“Also, now that we know you two are staying together — we aren’t stupid. We know what adults do when they’re alone, so just try to keep that off camera, ‘kay?”

Annabeth is actually going to drop down to the ground and cry in about two seconds. Piper wasn’t particularly _wrong_ in her assumptions, but Annabeth did not need her students to know about her personal life in this much detail!

“Don’t think we don’t know about what you do when you’re alone with Jason,” Percy teases, and Annabeth actually chokes on air.

“But we’re not _teachers_ —”

“ _Okay!”_ Annabeth interrupts, ready for this to be over. The can see the rest of her students screaming in chat, and she does not want to be here to witness this any longer. “I’m going to end this call now. Please never speak of this again.”

“I will bring this up tomorrow!” Piper says cheerfully, waving at them. “I—”

Annabeth clicks off the screen immediately, and the room goes silent.

She stays there with her head buried in her hands for a while, Percy’s hand still running up and down her back. His fingers curl as he scratches her skin languidly, waiting for her to get over her initial embarrassment.

“Oh my god,” Annabeth mumbles into her hands. “That was awful.”

“It wasn’t as bad as you think it was,” he assures.

“They’re never going to let us live this down.”

“They didn’t care,” Percy says, holding back a snicker. “At least now we can kiss in front of them.”

“You’re never getting any more kisses from me,” Annabeth says, standing up from the chair to try and walk the humiliation away.

Percy grabs her wrist, tugging until she looks him in the eyes. “We’ll see about that.”

Annabeth is so flushed that she wants to die, and her students now know about her current living status and have their own conclusions as to what they do when they’re alone, but the way he’s looking at her makes her feel incredible.

She tilts her head as she looks at him and he does the same. There’s a fire in his eyes as he challenges her.

“I’m not going to kiss you right now if that’s what you’re looking for.”

Percy bites his lower lip, whole body shaking with laughter. “You so sure?”

Annabeth takes a step back as Percy takes one forwards. She finds herself cornered against the bed with nowhere to go. She turns back to face Percy, and she only has one second to prepare before he’s grabbing her and falling onto the bed beside her.

 _“Percy,_ ” she says, jerking around when he started tickling her. “This isn’t — _funny!_ ”

Percy kisses her neck, fingers moving her shirt up slightly to grip her sides. “I think it’s hilarious. Your students found out you have a boyfriend. So what? You’re human.”

“ _Stop,”_ she says, snorting and jerking again as he squeezes and palms her stomach.

“Kiss me.”

Percy’s fingers stop moving along her skin as he hovers over her, looking deeply into her eyes. She feels so warm and loved, laying here with her best friend, and he’s the complete opposite of her, but maybe it’s for the best. Maybe it’s for moments like this, to balance her out.

And as she kisses him, she thinks that she can complain about her invasive students and cursed zoom calls later because the only thing that matters right now is making sure he keeps kissing her like she’s the only thing in the world.


	2. embarrassment

Today was just _not_ Annabeth’s day.

It was as though her students were _trying_ to make her off herself. Each class period was agonizingly slow, and watching her kids stumble around in front of the white board unsure of how to answer a math question was just flat out agonizing.

“Piper,” Annabeth seethes as the girl makes a dumb mistake. Annabeth only feels bad for calling it dumb for two seconds before she doesn’t care. “Is that how you distribute the parenthesis?”

Piper blinks. “Is that not how you do it?”

“When you’re distributing an exponent, you write it out, not multiply everything by two.”

 _Honestly_. She’s about to throw something.

Piper tries again, and Annabeth can feel a headache coming in as she stood there hopelessly, watching her calculus kids crash and burn. She no longer has it in her to even _try_ and put out the fire because these were seniors who she has taught for years and they should very well know how to distribute.

“Ms. Chase,” Piper asks cluelessly, turning towards her teacher. Annabeth was perched against the wall, one hand on her forehead because _dear lord._ “How do you use pascal’s triangle again?”

Annabeth swallows hard, counting to three. “You don’t need to use pascal’s triangle.”

“Oh, right.” Piper turns back to the board.

It really is painful watching her students not know how to do simple math when she has taught it a million times over. Normally she would assume she was the problem, but this — there was no way she was the issue here. This was just pure stupidity.

“This is pure stupidity,” Annabeth repeats after her thoughts, pushing herself off the wall and snatching a dry-erase marker from Leo’s desk. She tries to show them how to do it, knowing full and well that she will not be teaching them integration today. Because high schoolers are high schoolers, they don’t pick up on it and Annabeth has to physically retrain herself from walking out the door with her middle finger held up high.

She gets through one problem, and she has a tiny bit of hope, but it immediately dissipates when she takes in their faces. Annabeth likes to think that they were not looking _at_ her, but rather _through_ her. There was no light behind their eyes, and she kind of wanted to knock the light out of her own eyes if it meant she didn’t have to bear witness to this.

“Are you okay, Ms. Chase?” Piper asks, oblivious as always.

Annabeth turns towards her, a little lightheaded and baffled (what did they put in these kids’ cheerios this morning?). “I’m just not really understanding what’s going on,” she says.

Leo tilts his head, leaning forwards on his desk with two arms. “Neither are we.”

“ _That’s_ what I’m not understanding,” Annabeth says, a snappy edge to her voice. She knows she shouldn’t yell at them because they were still kids, and things like this were inevitable, but _come on._ “You understood this last week.”

“We forgot,” he excuses.

“Forgot?” Annabeth says meekly.

“We had a test in marine today, so our brains are fried,” Reyna throws in. Annabeth snaps her head to Reyna, who is leaning back carelessly in her seat, picking at her nails.

_Jackson._

“We still have twenty minutes left of class,” Annabeth says. “But you all smell like fried fish and are useless to me.”

Piper grins. “Ask us something easy and we can call it a day.”

“What do you need to make sure you never forget to write when you’re integrating an equation?”

“The answer!” Leo shouts confidently.

_How is this level of stupidity possible?_

“You’re all going to fail the AP test,” Annabeth says.

“What was the answer?” Piper asks, frowning.

“The plus c, as in crappy children are clueless.”

The pounding in Annabeth’s head is increasing with every second she looks at these kids’ faces. Right now, they were all ugly blobs she wouldn’t mind hitting over the head with a hammer, but as a teacher, she has to pretend this is motivation for her to teach them. Not that they deserved to be taught, because no, they deserve to be hit over the head with a _hammer._ Also maybe a tennis racket.

Annabeth just stares at her students’ ugly faces for what feels like eternity. She’s pretty sure she can see their brain cells dying with every passing second. She hears the door open behind her back and she assumes it’s one of her students leaving, and she is so jealous that it was not her leaving. She doesn’t even bother looking because if she looks, she swears she is actually going to—

“Chase!”

Annabeth scowls, turning towards the voice.

“What’s with the face?” Percy asks cheerfully, just working his way into the classroom.

“ _Jackson,”_ she says, snarling. “This is your fault.”

“What is?”

“You gave them a test and now they’re dumber than you.”

“Babe,” Percy teases. “That’s mean.”

Annabeth’s face flushes red immediately as she hears the snickers start to roll in from the twelve kids in the classroom. They’d managed to keep their relationship under wraps to avoid exactly this, but for some reason, Percy just loves to go around flaunting pet names. She isn’t sure if it’s some reverse psychology thing to make them think it’s all fun and games when it’s really not, but she _does_ know that this is mortifying.

“You’re disgusting,” is the only response Annabeth can think of.

Percy slides up to Annabeth’s desk beside the front whiteboard, settling into her chair, prompting Annabeth to raise an eyebrow.

“Don’t you have a class?” she asks.

“It’s my planning period,” Percy says.

“Go bother literally anyone else,” Piper says. Annabeth has to admit Piper has balls.

“Thank you, Piper,” Annabeth says, impressed.

Piper preens. “You’re welcome, Ms. C.”

Percy just scoffs and rolls his eyes, rocking her chair with his foot on the ground. “I wanted to see how your class was going. It seems like it’s not going at all.”

“Thanks to _you_ ,” Annabeth says. “You’re not helping, interrupting right now.”

Percy simply takes one look around before his eyes settle back on hers. “You weren’t going to get anything done today anyways.”

“I’m in the middle of class though.”

“Is it still class if you’re not teaching?”

The look Percy gives her is one she would like very much to smack off his face. He looks so smug, and a part of her thinks that maybe he planned his test for today just so her students would forget how to do anything math related, and he could sit and watch it all fall apart.

“All I’m saying,” Percy says, turning to fiddle with a pen on her desk, “is that you could use some cheering up right now, so don’t kick your best friend out of your room.”

Annabeth glares at him.

“Piper texted me,” he explains. “Said you were being mean and to come save them from an early death.”

“Mr. Jackson!” Piper complains.

Percy disregards her, giving Annabeth a dashing smile that never fails to make her knees weak, and he stands up to hold his arms out towards her. “Come here.”

“No,” Annabeth says, taking a step back.

Percy gives her the _look,_ and she finds herself unable to resist approaching him anyways. She steps into his arms, despite Reyna’s animated gagging motions and Leo’s whoops, and he wraps around her tightly. He’s really warm right now, and he smells so good that she could just curl into a ball and fall asleep right now. She never wants to leave his embrace. She feels protected and cared for, and it offers a place to hide from Leo’s mean flirtatious remarks.

Percy holds on for longer than expected and Annabeth has to pry his arms away. It works for a second, but then his hands are going to her cheeks and pulling her towards him, and her stomach is dropping.

He presses a sloppy wet kiss to her cheek, making sure to be obnoxiously loud, and Annabeth gasps, smacking him and wiping her cheek.

“Got you!”  
  
“You’re embarrassing me,” she whines, taking the bottom of his shirt to wipe his slobber away.

Piper has her phone out and a big smile across her face. Percy gives Piper a thumbs up before looking at Annabeth. He’s still smiling, basking in her misery and humiliation.

“But I made your day better!” Percy says, laughing. “Tell me you don’t feel better.”

“Oh, I feel fantastic that you just planted one on me in front of a bunch of students,” she says sarcastically, shoving him by the chest. He stumbles back but immediately returns, undeterred.

“As a student of yours, I do not feel fantastic,” Reyna interrupts. “In fact, I feel violated.”

Leo winks at Reyna, and Reyna shivers.

“I hate you all,” Annabeth says. “You children are the sole reason I regret becoming a teacher.”

The banter continues on between Percy and Annabeth for the rest of class, the students chiming in to team up against them. Even though Annabeth was immensely annoyed, she still has to admit that she does feel better. She hates these kids so much, but they also mean the world to her, so she can’t find it in her to be too bothered that they lost a day of teaching anymore.

The bell for lunch rings and Annabeth all but kicks her students out. Piper is the last one out, demanding a hug from Annabeth, and it’s only a little weird. Annabeth was used to Piper’s antics by this point.

Once the door closes, Annabeth turns to Percy, tilting her head at him.

“It was funny,” he says, snickering under his breath at her face. He comes up in front of her, and because there is no one else around, he puts his hands on either side of her to trap her against the wall.

“It was embarrassing,” she mumbles, resting her head against his chest.

“I love you,” he says, kissing the top of her head. “You were having a rough day and I thought I could make it up.”

“By nearly outing us to the class?”

“You said it yourself — they’re too stupid to actually suspect anything.” Percy nudges her chin up with his nose. “If you’re still having a bad day, I can perform some tabular integration with you?”  
  
Annabeth snorts, accepting the short kiss he gives her. “What?”

“Urban dictionary. Look it up.”

Annabeth shakes her head and bites her lower lip, endeared. She really loved this boy, even if he taught marine and used undeniably dirty terms off of urban dictionary.

“You plan on interrupting future classes again?” Annabeth asks, pressing her lips back to his. She breathes into it, letting her earlier worries slip away.

Percy smiles into the kiss. “If this is what I get, then yes.”


	3. flattery

Annabeth presses her lips together as she watches the scalpel press further into the starfish, her eyes squeezing shut at the squishing sound. She’s tempted to turn around and walk out the door to escape from this aquatic madness. The only problem was she couldn’t leave without feeling extraordinarily guilty for ditching Percy, so she was stuck in the room full of children bearing scalpels.

Percy walks around the different tables, pointing things out over the students’ shoulders, blissfully ignorant to Annabeth feeling like she was going to actually throw up. There was a reason she didn’t go into anything surrounding biology, and this was it, so she has no idea how on earth she was roped into this.

She doesn’t know how much time passes with her leaning against the door, looking anywhere except at the internal structure of a starfish, before Percy’s sliding up next to her, repressing his laughs.

“Are you okay?” he asks, a teasing undertone present in his voice. Annabeth can’t even look him in the eyes, ashamed that she’s being so squeamish and scared she will actually projectile vomit all over him and he will lose any and all attraction for her.

“It smells like fish in here,” she mumbles, biting her lip and squinting meanly at the now dismantled sea creature.

“It’s a marine class,” he says slowly. “It’s going to smell like fish when we’re doing dissections.”

“You chose _today_ to invite me over to your class? I would rather be grading stats tests.”

“I wanted to show you a starfish!” he defends, stopping to look over and scold Octavian who had just attempted to slice Leo. “Did you know that starfish can asexually reproduce through fragmentation?”

Annabeth points at her face. “Does it honestly look like I, a calculus teacher, care?”

“You actually look quite green.” Percy playfully presses his hand to her forehead. “I expected maybe Piper to pass out, but this is just an added bonus.”

“Shut up,” she says, shoving him away roughly. He just takes another step back towards her, grinning. “Can I please leave? I have things to do that don’t involve being in a room that smells like the ocean.”

Percy opens his mouth to respond, but Piper beats him to it.

“Mr. Jackson smells like the ocean!” Piper yells, waving the blade around wildly and nearly taking Reyna out. “I didn’t know you were repulsed by your own boyfriend.”

“Shut it, McLean,” Annabeth warns.

Percy smiles fondly, and she doesn’t know if it’s at her or his favorite student, but a second later he’s dragging her towards one of the tables, bumping Piper and Reyna aside carelessly. He slowly gauges her reaction, which was basically her trying to run like hell in the opposite direction.

“Come on,” he says, his arms wrapping around her waist and dragging her back to the table.

“Let go,” she chides, squirming. She’s well aware of the class of twenty students watching their teachers practically get into a fist fight, but she has gotten so used to things like this happening with the way Percy has no shame that she doesn’t even bat an eye.

“Let me show you my starfish!”

“I teach math for a reason!”

“I know you have, like, a kink for the word _derivative_ or something, but you’d know the ocean is pretty cool if you gave it a chance!”

“Ms. Chase has a what?” Leo asks, blinking.

“Now look what you’ve done,” Annabeth accuses, gesturing towards Leo. “I resent you.”

“Oh, you love me,” Percy says, forcing her to stand up.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Annabeth scowls, smacking his hands away from her, but she gives in.

The open and gutted starfish was staring her in the face, and the stench really starting to rise up now. She could feel her stomach churning, and she would rather die than touch that starfish.

“Touch it,” Percy demands.

“You touch it!”

“But it’s for you!”

“I don’t want it but thank you.”

“Touch it.”

“I feel _uncomfy_.”

“So does the starfish,” Percy says passively, mocking Reyna’s disgusted groan at their antics. “It’s not going to hurt you.”

Annabeth makes a sound of disagreement, but knowing she’s going to lose this fight, she picks up the metal stick thingy he holds in front of her face and she pokes it once.

“That was barely a poke,” Leo says, and Annabeth feels the sudden need to drop kick this kid.

“Don’t make me stab you,” Reyna says, glaring at him. Annabeth feels oddly prideful that her student was sticking up for her. “I _will_ stab you.”

“Hey now,” Percy warns, and _god,_ she really loved the way his voice changed when in teacher mode. There was just something about getting to see the sweet side of him that wanted to snuggle up against her at night and the side of him that would do anything for his kids. She loves the way his demeanor changes in a heartbeat, the way his voice lowers and his eyes sharpen, and she _really_ wants to kiss him right now.

“Did I do enough to get an A?” Annabeth jokes, suppressing the need to turn around in his arms and kiss him hard.

“Not quite,” he whispers in her ear, sending shivers down her spine.

Piper — Annabeth’s dearest Piper — smirks at Annabeth, and she highly regrets ever getting so close to her. Annabeth loved Piper like she was her own kid, and if Annabeth wasn’t her teacher, she might even call them best friends. The only downside was Piper could read her like a book, and Annabeth has no doubt that Piper knew exactly what was going through her mind.

It’s not like Annabeth is being subtle either. She’s sure there’s a red flush over her face.

And really, they weren’t supposed to show their affection in front of students, but their students truly didn’t care. Half the time, they were the ones bringing up horrifying innuendos and asking about when they were going to have kids. They didn’t have boundaries.

It was heartwarming, really.

“Who can tell Chase a little bit more about fragmentation?” Percy asks.

Piper dramatically clears her throat, elbowing Octavian when he tried to open his fat mouth. “Basically, if you break the starfish equivalent of a spine, it says _nope_ and rebuilds into _two_ starfish.”

“Imagine if humans could do that,” Leo adds.

Annabeth looks at Percy. “You have _interesting_ students.”

“They’re yours too, loser.”

Annabeth smiles fondly, pressing her shoulder against his.

“You’re really not the least bit interested?” Percy asks. There’s a shine in his eyes that tells her he genuinely wants her to care, and he’s always done it for her. She can’t help but love that about him.

“I _guess_ it’s interesting,” Annabeth admits, fingers tingling as he gazes at her like there’s nothing else in the world. “Now that my nose got used to the smell of fish.”

“It’s a _starfish_ , silly,” Percy says, tugging her closer to him. He presses a kiss to her nose, and there’s a mix of gags and awes around the room. She really does love these kids like family.

“Love you,” she whispers with the roll of her eyes so only they can hear, “you silly starfish man.”


	4. Chapter 4

Annabeth couldn’t think of a better way to spend her mornings than with Percy. He was always so sweet and warm when he first woke up, making him the perfect person to snuggle up to in the middle of a New York winter.

The ride to work was no less lovely with her sitting in the passenger seat, a steaming cup of coffee that Percy had made “ _with love”_ in her right hand, and her left hand intertwined with his. Watching the snow fall in a comfortable silence was so delicate and magical, and it’s truly the best way to start her day.

As she’s walking into the school with him, hand in hand, she leans closer to him, using his arm as a buffer from the biting wind. Percy just gives her a lopsided smile, something akin to adoration in his eyes, and pulled her into his side. There weren’t many students around this early in the morning, so she doesn’t bother trying to separate herself from him. She doesn’t even know if she could because he’s acting as her personal heater, and that may be too good to give up.

“You look adorable,” Percy comments as he holds open the door to the school. “The red nose really tops off your whole look.”

Annabeth sniffles, trying to subtly wipe her nose with the hand that’s still holding a travel cup of coffee. “Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m being serious,” he whispers playfully, bumping her arm with his elbow and prompting her to roll her eyes fondly. He guides her through the halls of the front office, reaching for her hand and lacing them back together. “You always look pretty, but right now you look so huggable.”

She can feel the flush still on her cheeks, but she doesn’t know if it was from the cold or his kind words. Almost a year of dating and he still made her feel just as giddy as she did on day one. “I love you.”

“Couldn’t possibly love me as much as I love you,” he quips, but he presses a kiss to her temple and changes the subject. “So, I was thinking. After work, cuddles and a movie?”

“Only if we can get snacks first,” she says, biting her lip in a smile. If there’s anything she loves more than waking up next to the love of her life, it’s getting to spend Friday night with just the two of them. There were no kids to bother them or tests to grade. It was a time for the two of them to just exist with one another, and she cherished every week when she got to go home with him.

“We can stop for snacks, but then we’re watching _Finding Nemo._ ”

“What’s with your obsession with the ocean?”

“I think clownfish are cute,” he answers, because of course he thinks clownfish are cute. “All fish are cute. That’s why I teach marine.”

Annabeth expected nothing less of him, and she decides to humor him. “Did you know I once had two goldfish and I named them _Ren_ and _Nephr_?”

“Unique names,” Percy says, sidestepping a kid frantically making their way down the hall.

“They both mean kidney.”

“You _would,_ Chase.”

“I also had a fish named Ornith.”

“That means bird,” Percy states.

“I liked the irony,” she tells him, taking a sip of her coffee. It’s still steaming in the cup, and it burns her tongue slightly. “Regardless, I think your obsession with the ocean is alarming.”

“At least I don’t go around screaming law of cosines,” Percy says, pointedly looking at her. “I didn’t even know what that _was_ until you started crying about how stupid they were last week when you were grading papers.”

“That’s because they _are_ stupid, I swear to god. They were all _I-don’t-know-when-to-use-law-of-sines-versus-law-of-cosines_ like it’s _hard!_ ”

“I’m sure it’s _so_ easy,” he says, but his laugh gives his sarcasm away. “You just have to accept that you were a fluke in the system, and no one will ever be a smart as you.”

Annabeth smacks him upside the head with her cup of coffee lightly but she’s still smiling. It’s moments like this that really get to her. She could just be herself around him, and they could tease each other but know that they love those things about each other at the same time.

She loved _him._

Annabeth bites at the inside of her cheek, loving the way he looks at her out of the corner of his eyes, before she slowly pops the lid of the coffee off to try and get it to cool down faster.

Percy’s arm is snug around her waist, so she doesn’t look up as she continues walking. She blows around the rim of the cup, the steam swirling up in the air. It smells mouthwateringly delicious and it’s starting to cool off, so she brings it to her lips just as they round a corner, and—

Someone slams into them, and suddenly the only thing Annabeth can register is _pain._

“ _Shit._ ” The scalding coffee seeps through her shirt almost immediately, and her skin feels like it’s on fire. The cup falls from her hand, the rest of the contents splattering on the floor, but she can’t be bothered to care as she tries to break the shirt’s contact with her blistering torso.

“— _you okay?_ ”

Annabeth’s mind comes reeling back as Percy’s voice reach her ears, and she can pick up the frantic edge to it.

“Annabeth,” he prompts again, his hand sliding down her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Instead of answering him, she glances to the person cowering in front of her, and her skin is on fire for a completely different reason.

Octavian stares back at her, terror clear as day on his face, and she is about to explode. This kid was always the center of _something,_ causing problems with every single breath he takes. He had no shame, and he always had the audacity to do whatever it is he wants to do, and now he’s ruined her favorite part of the day, and _she can’t breathe._

“Octavian,” she says tightly, scrunching her nose in mock politeness. “Did you maybe think it would be a good idea to _check_ where you’re going?”

The kid stammers.

  
“It would be smart not to go running around the halls and bumping into people carrying hot drinks,” she says, her voice dangerously steady. “ _God,_ you’re so—” There’s so much she wants to say, to _scream_ , at him, but even in her heightened sense of rage, she knows she can’t, so she clenches her fist hard enough for her nails to indent her skin and she pauses for a second before she storms off in the direction of her room.

She doesn’t look to make sure Percy is behind her, too busy trying to hold back rising tears, and she really doesn’t know why she feels this way. All she knows is everything was perfect, and now it’s not.

As she unlocks her classroom door, Percy’s hand is settling over the dip in her waist. She steps inside the room, and she doesn’t know what exactly she was going to do except perhaps have a meltdown, but she never got the chance because Percy wastes no time before pulling his sweater over his head and holding it out towards her.

“What are you doing?” she asks miserably, still forcing back her frustrated tears.

“Take it,” he says, gazing at her earnestly.

Annabeth bites her lip, her eyes glossing over. He was too good for her. “I’m sorry,” she chokes out. She doesn’t know how to express what she was sorry for, but she has a feeling he knows.

“Don’t be sorry.” Percy’s arms seek out the bottom of the sweater so he can help her into it. He slides it over her and once it’s on, he reaches forward to tilt her head towards him so he can give her a forehead kiss. “It was an accident.”

“Octavian was an accident,” she whimpers, dropping her head against his chest.

She doesn’t understand why she feels so upset. She just knows that she doesn’t like the hole in the pit of her stomach or the tightness of her throat.

“Why are you so sad?” Percy asks, cupping her cheeks and pouting.

“Today was going so well,” she complains, wincing away from his fingers that go to wipe her tears.

And maybe she does know why she’s so upset. Mornings were her favorite time of day because she got to be with Percy. She got to see him in ways that no one else did and listen to his words that he doesn’t say when anyone else is around. When they’re at work five days a week surrounded by children, he didn’t get to show her affection in the ways he does outside of school. Morning was her chance to see that.

 _Never_ had something interrupted those perfect moments before. Not until now.

The moment had been so perfect, so private and loving, and it was destroyed.

“You told me I looked adorable,” she says, sniffling. It was the only way she knew how to explain the torrent of emotions she was feeling. “Now I have a big coffee stain on my shirt, and I look disgusting.”

“You still look adorable.”

“Don’t lie to me,” she chides.

“I’m not lying,” he says softly. “You always look adorable.”

She just drops her forehead back against him pitifully.

“You’re the prettiest person I’ve ever seen,” Percy says. “I tell you that all the time.”

“You’re a big fat liar.”

Percy’s lips tilt up in a smile. “I’m not. In fact, you actually look even better right now, all cute and warm in my hoodie."

Annabeth looks down as though for the first time realizing she was wearing it. It was too big on her, but it smelled like him, the picture of a sunny day at the beach, warm on the sand.

“You’re so so so pretty, _especially_ when you’re wearing my clothes.” Percy’s arms wrap around her squeezing tightly, and she feels secure in his embrace. “Don’t let this ruin your day. Octavian’s stupid. This isn’t new information.”

“But our morning is ruined.”

Percy squeezes her tighter, slightly swaying back and forth. “Lucky for you, it’s Friday. We can go home and pretend it’s morning again and take lots of naps.”

“And watch _Finding Nemo?_ ”

“Oh, yes. That part’s nonnegotiable.”

Annabeth’s lips pull up at that as she nestles deeper against him. “I love you.”

Percy’s response is an affirmative hum and a kiss on the top of her head.

So _maybe_ her morning hadn’t gone quite as planned, and _maybe_ she was overreacting just a bit, but there’s always tomorrow, and there’s always their Friday night snuggles.

As long as she has Percy, she figures everything would be alright.


	5. missing you

Percy quietly sulks from Annabeth’s chair, his arms crossed over his chest and his face morphed into a pout.

He’s a little bit insulted that Annabeth wasn’t paying any attention to him. He came all the way from his classroom, unannounced, only to have her steal his food and ignore him. Percy isn’t one to be self-absorbed but come on. He deserved attention more than her students, he likes to think.

“What’s up with you?” Annabeth calls from across the classroom. She’s leaning over a student’s desk, helping them with a problem from the homework.

Percy looks up for a moment to glare at her before sliding further down the seat and pointedly staring at the ground.

“What did I do this time?”

People are starting to look at the couple, amused and intrigued by their teachers’ bickering that was sure to come. He should probably be alarmed that the students are already butting in, but now the attention is on him, and this is his time to shine.

“You’re ignoring me,” he tells her.

“I’m doing my job.”

Percy feels a stab of pride through the thick haze of jealousy, because yes, she _was_ doing her job, and she looked damn great doing it. He took a few seconds before responding just to trace over her body, appreciating the way her hair was thrown up in a messy ponytail and her hand was gently tapping a whiteboard marker against the desk. He always loved to see her in her working mode, the way her face morphs into one of concentration, the way she bites at her lip while grading papers or solving a problem.

Being ignored might not be so bad, now that he thinks of it. It just means he gets to watch her in her natural environment without judgement.

Without judgement from Annabeth, anyways. He’s pretty sure Piper is in there somewhere, but Percy can’t be bothered to tear his eyes away from Annabeth, who was now looking at him, clearly amused.

“You sure you want me to talk to you?” Annabeth asks, smirking. “You seem to be having fun all on your own there.”

Percy has half a mind to quickly dart his eyes down before he’s planning his revenge for her actually tricking him into thinking he—

He clears his throat and sits up straighter, raising an eyebrow at her. “Go back to teaching. I’ll be okay. It’s not like I need my girlfriend to love me or anything.”

Annabeth shrugs, a twinkle in her eyes, and then she goes back to helping a freshman he’s never seen before. Percy is only a little bit sad because he at least managed to get her to _look_ at him. It’s more than she’s done in the past week.

Percy jumps when Piper slides into the desk next to him. She leans forwards, and Percy just stares blankly at her until she speaks.

“I’m here to help you,” Piper explains.

“ _I’m_ the one who needs help?” Percy says.

“That is not a conversation you want to get into, Mr. Jackson.” Piper smiles innocently. “As you probably know, I am very invested in your relationship with her. I’ve noticed that she’s a little bit preoccupied. I’ve also noticed that one of the reasons you love her is because she’s very focused, which we both know means she won’t be coming to talk to you as long as there’s a student that needs help.”

Percy’s mind is trying to play catch up, completely confused by where Piper was going with this.

“I’m going to ask her a lot of stupid questions to lure her over here. While she’s here, you start up a conversation.”

“I’m not in high school, Piper.”

“You’re teaching in one,” she challenges dully. “I need my daily dose of teacher love. It makes the tests easier when you’re both happy.”

“I feel like I’m a part of some devious plan.”

Piper pats his shoulder. “Oh, Mr. Jackson.”

A second later, Piper is flagging down Annabeth, leaving Percy to try and pull on his poker face. Annabeth would know something’s up in a second.

“Ms. Chase, how do I find the slope of a line?”

Percy can’t help the snort he gives because he didn’t think Piper was going for a question _that_ stupid. Even he knew that one.

“Is that a serious question?” Annabeth asks. She glances at Percy out of the side of his eye, but otherwise doesn’t question why he looks ominous sitting in the corner.

“I can’t think of it.”

“Difference in y over the difference in x,” Annabeth tells her slowly.

Piper nods as though she knew this all along, and she motions for Annabeth to get closer so she can point to a specific question. When Annabeth kneels down in front of the desk to help her, Piper shoots Percy a look over Annabeth’s shoulder, mouthing something indistinguishable.

It’s kind of weird, conspiring with an eighteen-year-old. He doesn’t think he’s ever had a student as unashamed and gutsy as Piper. Maybe that’s why she was Annabeth’s favorite student. She used to be his favorite too until she started making fun of him.

Piper once asked him if he was getting grey hair. He’s only twenty-five.

“What did you eat this morning? Stupid loops?” Percy says, it being the only think he can come up with in the moment. Both Annabeth and Piper look at him in shock, and he can tell that Piper didn’t think he would start a conversation with Annabeth at the expense of her own dignity.

Piper just scowls, knowing her promise to him, and she continues on with the dumb questions. “When there’s a negative sign outside the parenthesis, what do I do with it?”

“Oh, come on,” Percy groans dramatically, internally grinning when Annabeth’s attention turns back to him. “You don’t want to deal with this sort of stupidity this early in the morning, do you?”

“You’re mean today,” Annabeth notes.

“I think it’s well deserved,” he says, gesturing towards Piper.

Annabeth doesn’t argue, and Piper looks even more insulted that her teacher didn’t defend her.

“But since I have you here,” Percy continues, “what do you say to going out to dinner tonight?”

“I say that it’s a school night and you’re being mean.”

“Nonsense. I’ll pay.”

Annabeth looks highly unamused as she stares at him, and her eyes quickly look to Piper before going back to him. Percy’s heart stops for a moment, fearful that she had discovered their conjoined plan, but then he calms when he realizes that it wouldn’t actually matter if she found out he lured her here because she would one-thousand percent not actually care.

“We’re going!” he announces, loud enough for the whole class.

This time, Annabeth does smile, taking a step towards him to nudge his foot with hers. “You’re such a romantic.”

Percy preens, even moreso when Piper gives him a big thumbs up. “I know I am.”

He’s much happier now than he was five minutes ago because Annabeth’s eyes are on him and that’s all he ever wants. She’s gazing at him softly, and he sees the marker still in her hand. Up close, he can see the small strands of hair falling from her ponytail. He can see the faint splay of freckles on her skin, the pink flush on her cheeks, and the shimmer of her grey eyes, like the calm before a storm.

“Are you planning on tricking me onto that date too?”

Percy comes reeling to reality. “Huh?” he says, and it’s not his most eloquent moment, his mouth gaping slightly.

“You think I didn’t realize you planned… whatever this is? I’m not stupid.”

“I didn’t do anything,” he denies, but there’s a hint of a smile on his lips.

“Piper’s stupid, but she’s not _that_ stupid,” Annabeth says, ignoring Piper’s _hey!_ “You two play dirty. I have to watch my back.”

“It was Piper’s idea.”

“Way to throw me under the bus,” Piper mutters.

“I only did it because I missed you,” Percy says. “I know I interrupted your work time, but you can’t be mad at me because you were ignoring me. Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

“Desperate times?” Annabeth asks, humored.

“I need attention, Annabeth!”

Annabeth shushed him, stepping closer again. When she spoke, only he could hear her.

“I promise to give you as much attention as you want later today but let me have my math fun.”

“You _would_ want to have math fun,” he teases. He knew he wasn’t going to be getting her attention anymore, but the unsaid promise of her hugs and kisses was enough to battle the disappointment. “Fine. Later then.”

“Later,” she repeats. He wants to kiss her so badly, but there are too many people around, so he settles for taking her hand and squeezing three times, awaiting the three squeezes back.

“I love you so much,” he says, because he can’t help it.

Annabeth gives him a scolding look, but she still says, “I love you too.”


	6. forbidden dates

“Tell them to leave us alone.”

Annabeth just barely manages to suppress her snort as Percy whispers that into her ear, clearly frustrated by their students surrounding them in the hallway. When she tilts her head back to look him in the eyes, she can see the physical pain in his eyes as their students keep pestering them.

“ _Ms. Chase_.”

Annabeth’s attention is brought back to Piper who is looking at her expectantly, and it’s then that she realizes she missed Piper’s entire exaggerated spiel about her low grade on a math test.

“Are you even listening?” Piper asks, frowning. Her hand is on her hip and Annabeth thinks she looks like the spitting image of a dramatic, self-centered high schooler.

“Say no,” Percy hisses into her ear again, forcing Annabeth to control her giggles. “Say no and we can go on a romantic date around the school to literally _anywhere_ your adopted children are not.”

“Yes,” Annabeth answers instead, grimacing at the sharp pinch in her side thanks to Percy. “You’re upset that you got a C on the integration test."

“ _Exactly_ ,” Piper says, triumphant. “So you’ll fix it?”

“No.”

Percy groans behind her, knowing full and well that they were going to spiral into another argument over grades. Annabeth almost feels bad for the poor guy. She had been promising him all week that they would be able to eat lunch together, but every single time they had been interrupted by none other than Piper and her little minions. She had been adamant that today was the day that she would kick her students out of her room for lunch, but when Piper had refused to leave without her grade at an A, all hope was thrown out the window.

Annabeth had even walked out of her own room hoping to throw Piper off her trail, and it did for a while, but then Annabeth found Percy, and Piper has the nose of a bloodhound.

“Ms. _Chase_!” Piper shrieks. Reyna has the decency to look annoyed by her friend’s behavior. “I _need_ an A on this test!”

“I love you, but it’s your own fault you didn’t study. You were one of the only C’s.”

“This is embarrassing! I don’t _get_ C’s. It’s not what I _do._ ”

“Apparently it is now,” Percy butts in, glaring at Piper. She was his student too, but from the looks of it, Percy doesn’t care to preserve Piper’s feelings. He really just wanted some time alone with his girlfriend. He wasn’t asking for much — a simple chance to sit down and complain about the grievances of teaching without having Piper seething or Leo bouncing around.

“I don’t recall asking you, Jackson.” Piper turns back to Annabeth expectantly, and Annabeth is slightly shocked that Piper had the guts to speak to her teacher like that as though he would hesitate to fail her on a test.

Percy would, in fact, _not_ hesitate.

The way things were going, Percy was probably planning on changing her grade to an F for the next twenty-four hours.

“Leave us alone,” Percy says.

“Tell your girlfriend to change my grade.”

Annabeth just groans, rolling her eyes. She really did have a soft spot for Piper, but it was diminishing by the second. As much as Annabeth plans on making fun of Percy for being so desperate to be alone with her, she wants it just as much as him, if not more. Right now, the only thing standing between a her and a school date was Piper.

She straightens slightly, catching Piper’s strong gaze. Piper returns the gaze with a burning passion, and Annabeth withers for a second before regaining her composure. She was _not_ about to lose a fight to an eighteen-year-old.

“I’m going to say this one last time, McLean,” Annabeth says calmly, privately proud of the authority in voice. “You earned the grade you got. I’m not changing it just because you feel entitled to the world.”

Okay, so it was a _little_ harsher than she expected, but the look Piper gives her makes her stand by her words.

“I’m not leaving until you change my grade.”

Annabeth has just about had it. She wanted to be with her boyfriend right now, and as it was lunchtime, she had every right to do so. She looks at Percy and they lock eyes. It takes a moment of analyzing his demeanor before she recognizes a look in his eyes. She knows what he’s planning before he even moves because she knows him better than he knows himself, and a moment later, a playful grin takes over her face.

Percy spins around, his hand wrapping around her wrist in an iron grip, and he _takes off_.

Annabeth’s sprinting behind Percy, struggling to keep up, but she feels so giddy that she just keeps going. She throws a look over her shoulder at Piper, who is looking at her with her jaw slightly opened and in utter shock.

She flashes Piper a shit-eating grin before turning back around. He leads her through the halls, weaving in and out of the groups of students. The kids they don’t teach look at them in a confused manner, but the ones they do teach look as though they expected nothing less from the two of them.

Annabeth recognizes his classroom as he stops to unlock his door, and then he’s practically shoving her over the threshold, slamming and relocking the door behind him to make sure no fuming Pipers break through.

She’s a little breathless, so when Percy’s pushing her further into the room, she doesn’t have the energy to ask him what he’s doing before he’s shoving them in the back closet and closing that door behind them too.

“What are you doing?” she whispers, laughing as he corners her against the cold ridges of a metal shelf. It’s so dark that she can’t see anything except a vague outline of his body.

“I’m taking you on a date,” he says breathlessly. She feels his lips trace over her cheek. “Your students are actually insane.”

“She just wants to do well.” Annabeth lets her head tilt to the side, closing her eyes as she feels Percy’s rapid breathing against her neck.

“She just wants you to herself.”

Annabeth snorts.

“She’s greedy.”

“Says the one who just dragged me to the back of a storage closet in his classroom,” Annabeth says, snickering. “You’re the greedy one.”

Percy scoffs. “Shut up and kiss me.”

Annabeth dutifully goes quiet as Percy’s hands find her neck in the dark. He closes the gap between them, and she sighs a breath of relief. It feels like it’s been forever since she got to just kiss him without any inhibitions. It feels like a breath of fresh air.

Percy’s lips are soft against hers, and his hands are gently caressing the skin of her back now, where her shirt had slightly risen up. She feels like she’s on cloud nine.

Too soon, Percy pulls away. She knows he hasn’t gone far because she can still feel his breaths hitting against her slightly parted lips, but as she tries to lurch forwards, she accidently hits something on the shelf behind her, sending it crashing to the ground.

“ _Careful_ ,” Percy warns, though he makes no efforts to move her away from whatever fell. He pushes closer against her, letting their chests touch so she can feel his heartbeat reverberating through her. “Don’t break anything expensive.”

“What was that?”

“Hydrochloric acid,” he speaks from right in front of her.

Annabeth makes a sound of disapproval. “I didn’t know you taught chemistry.”

“I teach you about our chemistry all the time,” Percy says. “I show you our chemistry on the table periodically.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“ _Hm_. That’s kind of mean.” Percy’s pouting lips seek hers out in the dark again, and she can’t stop the laughter from bubbling up in her throat. He pulls away, annoyed. “ _What?_ ”

“You pulled me away from Piper like a naughty teenager so you could make out with me in your closet,” Annabeth manages, stifling giggles with her hand as though someone will hear them and catch them red-handed.

“I just wanted to spend some time with my girlfriend,” he defends, trying to catch her lips again. When she playfully swats his face away, he whines. “Kiss me!”

She wants to keep teasing him, but she also really wants to satisfy that feeling coursing through her veins, so she shuts up and kisses him back. They stay like that for a few minutes, just letting themselves enjoy the moment, but then something’s flooding back to Annabeth’s memory and she smiles against him.

“Is this romantic enough for you?” she mouths against him.

Percy just smiles with her. “Nothing’s more romantic than forbidden closet dates.”

Oddly enough, she thinks he might just be right about that.


	7. Chapter 7

“I have _nothing_ to wear.”

Percy looks up from his position on their bed, unfazed. He was used to her dramatic complaints about having no clothes but based on the fact that his closet was overflowing and he’s pretty sure he hasn’t seen her wear the same outfit twice at work yet so far, he knew it wasn’t true.

“Help me, please.”

“Close your eyes and grab whatever,” Percy says, glancing back down to his phone. “We have to leave soon, and you’re nowhere near ready, but I am both your boyfriend and coworker who also has to be there, and I _will_ pick you up and drag you out of the apartment—” He cut off immediately, dodging the heel she threw at his head with a laugh. “You look good in anything, and that’s coming from both me _and_ your deeply-involved students, so just pick something.”

Annabeth stomps her foot in front of the closet like a toddler. She fingers her lanyard holding her school ID before giving up and turning around. She makes her way to right in front of Percy, staring down at him for a few seconds before she’s climbing on top of him, forcing him to abandon the phone in his hand.

“What are you doing?” he asks, but he’s laughing as she headbutts him.

“I’m trying to curl up in a ball and die,” she says.

“Not on my lap,” he scolds. His hands smooth down her wild hair, knowing that it’s going to add another ten minutes to their voyage down to the school because she wasn’t going to leave until she looked _perfect._

“Yes, on your lap,” Annabeth mumbles from where her face smashed into his chest. She jerks around for a second, trying to get comfortable, and then she’s on her back, Percy’s arm cradling under her and supporting her neck. “If I have to die, I want to do it with you.”

“No one’s going to die,” he says softly. His hand taps her hip, thinking for a moment, before he decides to humor her. “Talk me through the problem. What’s going on?”

“I have no clothes.” The way she says it, Percy would’ve thought someone got hit by a car.

Percy looks to their closet dubiously. “Then why am I looking at about twenty outfits?”

Annabeth pauses her moping to follow his eyes. She blinks as though she didn’t see any of those. “I don’t see anything.”

“You could always go nude,” he proposes.

Annabeth scoffs, bonking him on the head with a random throw pillow she picked up from behind him. “This is a _school_ event, and all of our students will be there. You want them to see me naked?”

“That is a very valid point.” Percy hums. “Tie a bed sheet around yourself and call it a day.”

“You’re useless to me.”

Percy rolls his eyes and rocks her back and forth. He was rushing her to get out of the apartment because he knew she would take longer to get ready, but the reality was that they had some time. They had at least another hour before they absolutely had to be leaving.

Besides, she looked so comfortable in his arms, cradled sideways, body turned in towards him, that he didn’t have the heart to bother her. Especially not when her eyes started to slowly blink and flutter shut.

He lets her drift off to sleep, if only for five minutes. As he looks at her, he starts to notice something that’s been occurring to him a lot more recently.

Every time he looks at Annabeth, he sees more than just her. He sees a little girl with ribbons braided into her hair bouncing around between them. He sees a future with her that he wants so desperately to fulfil. He doesn’t think it’s going to happen — at least not anytime soon — but he knows he wants a life like that. They’re both still so young, and they’re so in love, and they deserve it.

Percy keeps rocking her gently, imagining what it would be like if _maybe_ he was rocking a baby to sleep, or holding his family in his arms while they watched a Disney movie because their child was so excited to see a princess. It’s a life he’s always dreamed of, and now he knows it’s a life he has a chance of making come true.

“You gotta wake up, baby,” he whispers when he looks back at the clock. Somehow, half an hour had passed by. “We really have to leave soon.”

Annabeth stirs slowly. She wipes the sleep from her eyes, and as if on cue, her phone dings from its position in her back pocket. Percy’s hand digs it out for her, holding it for both of them to see, and it’s a message from someone he did _not_ expect.

“Why does Piper have your phone number?”

Annabeth shrugs, taking the phone from him. She types out a response lazily, and Percy can’t hide his amusement at her blatant distain for Piper.

 **(Piper:** where are you

 **Annabeth:** none of your business, peasant

 **Piper:** why can’t you love me?

 **Annabeth:** you are peasant)

A second later, Annabeth’s forcing herself to get out of his arms. The absence of her body heart leaves Percy empty and cold, but it’s replaced by her lips pressing against his momentarily. He tries to grab her and keep her against him for longer, but she makes it a brief kiss, pulling away to head back in front of the closet.

“Does any of this scream _I’m a math teacher but not one of those ugly ones_?”

“You could wear a blow-up dinosaur costume and you would still scream _hot math teacher_ ,” Percy tells her. He goes to her side, picking up one of his favorite outfits of hers and holding it in front of her face. “Wear this.”

The smile that morphs onto Annabeth’s face makes him think that she was planning this the entire time. Her hand had brushed by that specific piece of fabric a million times over, but when it’s _him_ that tells her to wear it, it’s suddenly exactly what she was looking for.

Annabeth Chase was his little troublemaker, never making things easy for him. He doesn’t mind.

And because he’s spent the last half hour thinking about their future kids, he doesn’t catch himself until it’s too late.

“Are you going to be like this with our kids too?”

Annabeth stops what she’s doing to look up at him, and now he can feel the blush start at his neck and travel its way up his face. She doesn’t say anything for a few painful beats, until her jaw is going slightly slack and she struggles for words.

“I— _what?_ ”

“Nothing,” he manages, already turning on his heel to walk out the room, out the front door, and to the middle of the ocean to become friends with an individual piece of krill, or something.

“No, tell me!”

Percy stops by the door, not ready to face her, but he knows she isn’t about to let him get away, so he lets himself look at her. Surprisingly, she’s looking at him with a smile.

“You said something about our kids?” she prompts.

“No.”

“Lie to me, then.” She bites her lip and smiles. “Come on. _Please?” Now_ he can see the excitement on her face, and everything comes crashing back to him.

Clear as day, he can see the picture of Annabeth holding an infant on her hip, one hand sorting through their closet — _no._ It’s the closet of a nursery, filled with dresses and onesies. And Annabeth is dressed in a flowing white shirt and black dress pants to go to work, her blonde hair cascading down her back. He sees a baby that can’t be more than six-months-old with her tiny fingers tangled in Annabeth’s curls, and Annabeth is bouncing her as she finally pulls out a pink romper, but not before throwing him a teasing glance and telling him, _there’s nothing for her to wear._

Percy’s heart stops when he imagines Annabeth holding the baby out to him with an endearing smile, asking nicely for him to change the diaper — he’d complain, but he’d still do it because he’d do anything she asked of him. And when their baby is in her outfit for the day, Percy’s kissing Annabeth goodbye by the front door so she could get to the school while he dropped the baby off at his mom’s before meeting her in her classroom.

It’s so real that a part of him thinks he saw a glimpse of his future.

A sudden boost of courage, Percy says, “When we have kids, they’re going to have so many clothes that it’ll look like the closet exploded, and you’re still going to say that there’s nothing to wear, right?”

Annabeth drops the clothes she was holding onto the floor just so she could take a step closer to him. He allows his arms to rest against her waist, locking behind her, and her arms wrap around his neck. “ _When_ we have kids?”

And Percy falters. “I mean— I thought you wanted kids?”

“I do,” she assures quickly. “But the way you said it… it was so real, like— _kids_.”

“Kids,” he repeats. “Do we want to have kids?”

“Eventually,” she tells him. “I’d like to be married first, though.”

Of course she would, and that’s why he loves her. She knows what she wants, and she’ll do anything to get it.

“Get married first,” he repeats again. “We’ve been together for a year.”

“And I really like you. I think a wedding would be a pretty good next step.”

“And then kids,” he adds.

“And then kids.” She looks around, and he thinks maybe she’s looking at their future too. “Let’s check back in two years and see where we’re at,” she says. “Then we can seriously consider this.”

“But you do want kids?” he asks.

“I want kids, if only to tell you that she needs more clothes.”

“You’re using me for my money, woman.”

“You love it.”

And he really does, because it means that he’ll get to have kids with her. The only concern really is that he knows she’s going to buy a million things for that baby, and they’re both teachers that don’t make that much money. Still, they’ll manage. They always do.

“I do love it,” he says, “and I love you.”

Annabeth kisses him once and says, “Here’s to closets and kids and not enough clothes.”

Now _that’s_ something to celebrate.


	8. Chapter 8

Annabeth’s first week as a teacher is not at all as she expects it to be. It’s a rather lonely week, she quickly finds, because it seems even the teachers have some sort of social cliques to abide by, and it is apparent that she is not yet a part of them.

It doesn’t help that it’s a big school with an alarming number of twists and turns. She decides on the first day alone that she’s perfectly fine just staying in her room all day in her little corner of the school. It’s a bit sad, she’s aware, but she’s here to teach calculus so she also supposes it does not matter too much.

All things considered, she survives the first four days of working there alright. It’s not actually until Friday morning that she becomes immeasurably lost and all hope for avoiding the embarrassment of being a newcomer disappears.

It’s a guy that finds her – another teacher, she presumes — staring blankly at the hall ahead of her. Annabeth doesn’t even hear him come up behind her, too preoccupied trying to remember her way to the office from her room, so when he speaks, she nearly jumps out of her skin.

“Do you need help?”

Annabeth turns her head to face him, finding him looking at her with an amused smile. The first thing that runs through her head is that he’s _cute_ because, well, he seems to be the definition of gorgeous. He has green eyes that glimmer with humor, and she must admit his sharp jawline surely adds _something_ to her day. But he seems warm and open, so she isn’t too mortified when she answers, “Probably.”

“Probably?” But he steps closer anyways at her invitation.

“I’m supposed to go to the front office, but this is my first week, and this school is unnecessarily big.”

“It takes a while getting used to,” he says. “I’ve always preferred smaller schools where everyone knows everyone, but there are some benefits to the bigger ones.”

“I just hope I find my way around sooner rather than later,” she says.

“I’m sure you’ll be alright,” he assures her. It’s then that it suddenly dawns on her that he probably thinks she’s a student herself. He practically towers over her, and she’s acting like that one new kid who’s always lost, so it wouldn’t exactly be a surprise if he didn’t even realize she was a teacher.

“I just… I’m a teacher here. I don’t know if you realized, or thought I was a student, but –” She smiles nervously. “I’m a teacher.”

He raises an eyebrow almost imperceptibly, but the smile on his face doesn’t wane. “I knew that.”

“You did?”

"You’re the new AP teacher. Chase, right?”

She feels a little giddy at the thought of him knowing her name despite them never having met. She shoves it deep down her throat, nodding and saying, “That’s me.”

“I figured,” he says. “No student would be willing to accept help from a _teacher._ Us disturbing creatures that like to fail students for fun, right?” The roll of his eyes lets her know he’s probably quoting someone one of his students said to him.

Annabeth brushes a strand of her hair behind her ear, itching to keep moving so she isn’t too late to her meeting in the office. “I guess so, yeah.”

"Anyways,” he says, noticing the shift in her feet. “Take the first staircase on the left, go down, and the office should be the entrance at the end of the hall.”

“Thank you,” she breathes out.

“By the way,” he starts before she can fully leave. “My name’s Percy, if you ever need any help getting around again. I’d be more than happy to help.”

And she knows that she’s supposed to say thank you again and keep walking, but now she somewhat doesn’t want to leave. She decides to put a pause on getting downstairs – surely no one would punish her for being lost on her first week – and asks him a question.

“What do you teach?”

He gives her a beautiful smile. “Marine science.”  
  
“The ocean?”  
  
“Pretty much. Finding Nemo is actually a pretty educational film.”

“How so?”

“Real world example of bioluminescence in angler fish,” he says with practiced fluidity. “You should come visit my class sometime and we can watch it together.”  
  
She thinks he means it innocently, but then the way he bites his lip to smother a grin as her face turns bright red says otherwise. “Yeah, well, I’ll probably get lost along the way.”

“That’s what I’m here for!”

She gives him a dubious look.

“You should get going in case you get lost again,” Percy says. “It would surely be a shame if you were to get fired your first week working here.”

“For you or for me?”

He doesn’t answer that question, but he gives her a knowing look. “Hopefully I’ll see you around, Annabeth.”  
  
Percy is the one to walk away first, leaving her with a foreign feeling of disappointment as she watches him leave. She sincerely hopes that she sees him again because he was the first person to make her feel somewhat comfortable here. But this was the first she’s seen him in the week, so she assumes his room is far from hers and that this was a one-time thing.

Annabeth quickly learns that is not the case the next week when Percy slides into the seat next to hers at an after-school meeting amongst the staff. Her head tilts up at the sound of a body nearly falling out of the chair beside hers and is pleasantly surprised when she sees him looking at her.

“Hi,” she says, blinking. “Are you okay?”

“I’m great.”

“You almost fell out of the chair.”

“Oh, someone else almost sat here. I had to run and steal it from them.”

“You wanted that seat that badly?”

“Of course,” he says. “I wanted to sit next to you.”

It’s a kind statement because even after a little more than a week at the new school, she finds she still doesn’t have any acquaintances. To hear that he _wanted_ to sit next to her makes her feel a little bit better about herself.

“So,” he prompts, leaning in a bit. “How was your first week?”

“It was mortifying,” she says. “I have no friends.”

“Well, I did offer to watch Finding Nemo with you, and you declined.”

“I don’t even know where your room is.”  
  
Annabeth’s eyes turn towards someone at the front of the room that begins talking, but her eyes quickly dart back to Percy when he speaks.  
  
“I can show you,” he says kindly. “That way you know where to go and complain when your students start showing you the real side of them.”

“The real side?”

“The side that has very pointy teeth and claws out for blood. I believe you have Piper McLean in one of your classes, so don’t be fooled by her sweet persona. It’s all a façade. It’ll fade in due time.”

“Is she one of the bad ones?”

“Not bad. Just too personally involved in her teachers’ lives for her own good.”

Annabeth laughs quietly.

“But the kids like you,” he says. “I know you’re probably still nervous, but if it means anything to you, you’re doing a good job.”

She’s about to thank him, or burst into tears, but then the person speaking at the front of the room scolds him for talking, true to the high school feel, and he tosses his hands up in surrender. But the look he shoots her, a warm and gentle smile, has her desperate to hear his voice once again, to talk to him about anything and everything.

The meeting passes slowly, but Percy whispers things to her that have her struggling to withhold laughter. He insults the old guy that teaches history when he goes to the front of the room, and he passes her a piece of laffy taffy that he pulls out of the pocket of his jacket. She learns about him without even speaking – he’s playful, poking at her leg to get her attention and slide her even more sweets under the table, and kind, offering her a pencil when she realizes she forgot her own. He shares laughs with her as though he’s known her his entire life and not for a week, like they carry secrets of their own.

By the time the meeting is over, she expects him to get up and leave just like everyone else is doing, but he stays put. When she looks over at him, he’s waiting for her patiently, and she has to smother a giddy grin with the palm of her hand.

“Are you waiting for me?”

“Of course,” he says. “We’re friends.”

“We’ve probably said, like, two-hundred words to each other.”

“How do you _think_ you make friends, Chase?”

“I’m just stating a fact.”

“If our word count is so important to you, the invitation for that movie is still up.”

She snorts. “Finding Nemo?”

“I’m always down for Finding Nemo,” he says with a wide smile, “but I get the feeling you’d prefer something else. I’m fine with whatever.”

“So you just want to go see a movie?”

“It would be fun,” he says. “One movie, and then we can call ourselves friends!”

Annabeth sighs, but she feels ephemeral joy. “Finding Nemo, then.”

They plan for that weekend, and it goes amazingly. Percy quickly becomes her closest friend at the school, giving her the ins and outs of teaching the advanced students. He becomes her best friend outside of the school, and it’s not long at all before they’re going on weekly _not-dates._ It’s something she’d said after the third time they went to see a movie as friends _,_ and she’d cleverly asked if this was a date and he’d responded it’s either a not-date or not a not-date, depending on what she wanted.

It was that moment that clued her in that maybe his feelings for her extended beyond a friendly coworker relationship. Still, he never pushed her, instead inviting her over to watching Finding Nemo too many times for it to be considered healthy.

Their mutual attraction becomes apparent after no time at all. Still, neither of them actually make any moves. She isn’t sure why — it’s not that she’s worried about losing him as a friend because he’s made it very clear that would never happen — but she thinks it may have more to do with not wanting what they have to end just yet. She’s content, and while she wants his hugs and kisses, she wants his teasing tackles and hair tugs.

It’s not until three months after Annabeth starts teaching that anything actually happens.

They’re sitting on the couch in his apartment, Annabeth’s head on Percy’s lap as he plays with her curls. A movie plays in the background, and it’s not a surprise what movie it is, but she’s not really listening to anything that’s happening. Her eyes are closed as he twirls strands of her hair, and she is entirely relaxed.

“Hey,” Percy whispers, poking her softly on the cheek. “I know you love using me as a personal hairstylist and foot warmer and everything in between, but I have a ton of grading I need to get done.”

Annabeth says, muffled against his thigh, “No.”

“No.”

“I’m more important than your students. They can suffer.”

“You want me to sit here instead and tend to your every need?”

“I mean, it sounds like a nice life,” she admits, turning onto her back so she can look up at him. He caresses her cheek with his thumb, and this feels entirely reminiscent of a couple. She smiles lazily as Percy plays with her fingers before singling out her index finger and trying to shove it up her own nose just to bother her.

Annabeth wraps her arm around his neck and pulls him down over her playfully, trying to smother his face in the pillow on the couch. He wins out over her, just like he always does, and while it’s because he’s so much bigger than her physically, she’d let him win every time anyways.

“I surrender,” she says, her hands pinned above her head. Percy hovers over her, supporting himself on his elbows as he looks at her doubtfully.

“The second I let you go, you’re going to punch me,” Percy says, pressing her hands above her head harder when she begins struggling.

“Probably,” she admits with a cheesy grin.

“You’re a menace,” he says, but there’s no malice in his voice.

She pretends to think for a moment. “There _is_ something you can do if you want me to leave you alone.”

Percy looks at her in doubt. “And what is that?”

Annabeth doesn’t even know what she’s going to say until it’s too late. He’s looking into her eyes, all too adoringly, and his hands are soft around hers, and she is filled with so much love for this boy, so she says, “Kiss me.”

Percy freezes, and she thinks maybe she’s said the wrong thing. But then his eyes dart down to her lips, and she can feel his heartbeat against her chest, and–

Percy lowers his lips to hers and kisses her softly. It’s slow and gentle, but it takes her breath away. He fits her perfectly, just like he always has. He’s her other half, her best friend, and it feels so right.

Annabeth pulls away first with a subtle smile on her face. Percy presses his face into her neck and begins laughing, and she matches his laughs in giggles because _that had actually just happened._

“I can’t believe our first kiss was with Finding Nemo playing in the background,” she says between giggles.

“It’s only appropriate,” he says as he lifts his head to look at her. “A symbol of the reason we met.”

“A symbol of our _love,”_ she teases.

Percy kisses her again because he can. She finds that she likes the feel of him against her. “I can’t believe I’m in love with someone who teaches calculus.”

“At least you’re not in love with someone who can’t stop talking about the aquaculture of _tuna._ If there’s a loser here, it’s you.”

“You’re the one dating the loser.”

“Is that what this is? Dating?”

“Or not-dating,” he says playfully.

Annabeth couldn’t even fool herself if she tried. She’s been waiting for this moment since they first met in the halls, and now that it’s finally here, she’s not about to pass it up. They have time to make up for, having skated around their true feelings for an agonizing three months, so she says, “I guess I _am_ dating a loser.”

“Is that really the worst thing?”

Annabeth smiles and pulls him down to her once again. She says against his lips, “Not a bad thing at all.”


End file.
